The National Organization for Marriage is politically tone deaf. I cannot think of a more stupid decision than the one to appeal to the theocratic instincts of radical Islamists and find common cause in their desire to oppress gay people. And I cannot fathom why they think that identifying with Chinese communists will appeal to their support base.

We’ve long known that NOM opposes freedom of religion for anyone other than those who agree with them. We’ve long known that they don’t blanch at the idea of capital punishment for gays. We’ve long known that in their views, states should impose morals codes on a local population based on religious dictates of a centralized global religious self-proclaimed authority. We’ve long understood that behind the “let the people vote” claims was an organization who sought to impose its will in any way possible with no more regard for the will of the people than they have for the individual rights and dignity of gay Americans.

But convincing the rest of the world that they are exactly like the Taliban or any other Islamist group has been difficult. Arguing that their perspectives on democracy are the same as those in communist China was daunting. It seems too bizarre and accusatory and extreme.
But now NOM has done it for us.

The National Organization for Marriage today announced that its new DumpStarbucks.com campaign is going international.

“In our first week, we gained 25,000 pledge signers in the U.S. alone; today we go international, expanding DumpStarbucks.com campaigns into Mandarin, Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Bahala (one of the chief languages of Indonesia),” announced NOM President Brian Brown. “DumpStarbucks.com online ads will also start running in Egypt, Beijing, Hong Kong, the Yunnan region of China, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.”

And just in case anyone missed the connection:

“The National Organization for Marriage is in this for the long haul,” said Jonathan Baker, head of NOM’s Corporate Fairness Project. “Here’s our goal: If Howard Schultz and his insular Seattle liberals hear from enough of us, management will move to a more genuinely inclusive attitude toward its customers’ and partners’ diverse views on marriage.

“Us.” You know, “us”, the members of NOM and the mullahs in Bahrain and the communist leaders in China.

If I have time later to write, I’m going to. It has annoyed me terribly since I first read of it.

Quite aside from the obvious fact that their boycott of Starbucks received around 1/2 of a percent response amongst their dedicated , dessicated, and tawddle-pated as they might be base, when compared to the starbucks and gay supporters…

Quite apart from the assumption that shared religious condemnation of homosexuality translates into a shared mindset about gay people and the alleged “threat”– and it STILL does not make it right…

Quite apart from the assumption that people in these cultures care all that much about something that isn’t in their culture, and care so much that they would give up the only decent cup of coffe for fifty miles around…

Quite apart from all of that is the sheer meanness of it.

“Hey! I got an idea. Let’s go to some place that we think hates gay people as much as we do, and see if we can stir them up to hate gay people even some more.

“And there’s are 3 big bonuses for us in it. we always have plausible deniability– how were we to know they would take our message of love for homosexuals and turn it into violence and repression. Or: See what happens to the homosexual agenda when the righteous stand up against the perverts.

“Or in a pinch, we’ll always have “See??? at least were better than the Muslims and the godless Chinee.”

What amazes me, though is the people they are trying to sleep with. Do they really know so little of the world? Especially islam, as polygamy is quite common in Islamic countries, and NOM is all one-man-one-woman-anything-else-is evil. And are they not aware of the institution of Temporary Marriages– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikah_mutâ€˜ah– within Islam, marriages which are completely contractual for a specified length of time, and then the couple is not married any more? Basically, it’s a religious sanction of sexual immorality, very much like an annulment is for Catholics with biological children from theitr never-existent marriage.

In short, I think they WILL start looking like the fundelibangelist relgionistas that we have always known they were, however well they kept it beneath their cassocks. do they really think this is going to convince moderates, and not make them look REALLY bad?

What we need to do is continue putting their name and corelate it to the worse elements in the taliban and comunists. Keep using their logo along with pictures of Bin ladden and let them have to defend themselves every step of the way

Well, the good news in all of this is that the only reason NOM is going international is because the Dump Starbucks campaign has been a failure in the relatively civilized nations of the world. Thankfully, NOM is even sleazier than I ever imagined them to be. God must be horrified at who they are sleeping with now, or if He isn’t, He’s as sleazy as they are. I guess the thinking is, “if those people hate the homos, we have some serious common ground.”

NOM’s decision to advertise this boycott in China shows their ignorance. Homosexuality has gained rapid public acceptance in China since legalisation in the mid 90s. Their psychiatric association declassified homosexuality as a pathology in 2001 after doing studies similar to Evelyn Hooker’s. There’s no comparable morality campaigning in China as you see in countries with Abrahamic cultural baggage.

At what point is NOM going to cross the line with the Southern Poverty Law Center and rightfully be declared a Certified Hate Group? I would think that the recent string of evidence to that effect would have already garnered them the honor.

@Ben in Oakland:
Slight correction, polygamy makes up perhaps 1-3% of all Islamic marriages, so it’s hardly common. Most men can’t afford to have more than one wife.

But honestly, I think NOM would prefer even temporary marriages to expanding rights marriage here; at least it’s… what’s the term I first read here? Penis-in-vagina? This has never been about redefining marriage. It’s always been about hating people who are gay. (I know, stating the obvious…)

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE are actually fairly liberal Islamic countries (as is Egypt) and most people won’t care or even notice the ads. I either know people in or have been to all of them. (I was stationed in Bahrain, ex-US Navy cook here) The only country I can think of where they might find some empathy would be Saudi Arabia but they’d never be able to run their stuff there, because they are a Christian group in all but name.

More to the point, sex is considered a very private matter over there, not something to be discussed in public most of the time. (This includes homosexuality which most of those countries are against but don’t notice/care if it’s kept in private) I’d be amazed if they even get on the air.

“If Howard Schultz and his insular Seattle liberals hear from enough of us, management will move to a more genuinely inclusive attitude toward its customersâ€™ and partnersâ€™ diverse views on marriage.”

Umm, does NOM realize how bizarre and hypocritical their statement is?

I’m used to bizarre things from the Anti-gay crowd. When you gotta make stuff up just to have bad things to say about somebody and you might really believe in your cause, chances are you waved goodbye to reality a long time ago.

Political movements that are anti-Modernity eventually have to choose between morality, resulting in having to accept defeat, and getting enough anti-Modern allies together with no meaningful moral basis to stay politically effective.

In my experience morality always loses this argument. Which tells me that morality was never the fundamental motivation, whatever they may pretend to. Retaining a/the pre-Modern condition is, with its particular structure of social privilege.

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